As poetry editors at Bear Review, each year there’s really no greater joy than informing a poet that their anonymous contest entry hasn’t only won us over, but that it has also floored our judge, who is always one of the most dynamic poets writing in English.
This year’s judge was Ama Codjoe, who contributed to an early issue of the journal. After choosing the prize-winner and runner-up, Codjoe named two poets' poems as finalists for publication in Volume 10, Issue 2. These poems, after we revealed the identities of the poets, were written by Stephanie Niu of Marietta, GA, and Brian Woerner of Flushing, NY. (Click on the poet’s name to link to their fantastic poem.)
As serious poets ourselves, we are always—as you probably are—interested in knowing a poet’s general process. Curious to learn how the poet generated such a phenomenal poem, and how this piece fits with the other poems in their manuscript taking shape, we reached out to each finalist with these questions:
Marcus Myers: Can you tell us the story of your poem that placed in the 2023 Michelle Bouisseau Prize?
SN: In some ways, this poem is a compressed recounting of my relationship with Christmas Island, a remote Australian territory that I lived on for most of 2023. This was my second time visiting the island, a return trip of sorts after my first time there five years earlier. I wrote this poem physically at, and emotionally around, one of my favorite spots on the island, a rocky stretch along the northwest coast where I routinely went after seeing off a beloved at the island’s (tiny) airport. On this visit in particular, I was grappling with the feeling that what I wanted– to return to how I remembered the island five years ago, to return to who I was–was not possible, and possibly never had been.
MM: Does this piece come from a manuscript of related poems? If so, what work do you see it doing as you’ve put it in play with them? If not, how do you see each poem you write and “keep” in relation to those you’ve already written and those you’ve yet to write?
SN: Yes and yes and no! I’ve been in the process of making a full-length collection of poems for a few years now, but the manuscript continues to change as I change as a writer and person. As a result, this poem has appeared in several iterations of a full-length manuscript, many of which I’ve since discarded. “I Crossed the Sea Boardwalk” explores the feeling I often have that it is impossible to truly return to anything, whether that be a place, a dream, or a person. This thread, along with Christmas Island itself as a place of personal discovery, connects much of my work.
MM: Can you tell our readers about your process for making a poem?
SN: I write when moved to write, always in one go, and always on paper first (if I can help it). Usually a scrap of language– a funny bit of conversation, a song lyric, a strange sentence in my journal– is enough to trigger a poem-making event. If I fail to write a poem in a continuous burst, I risk losing the feeling that triggers the poem. Once the entire poem is captured, I take my time transcribing, revising, and inspecting the poem, and seeing over the following days and weeks whether the language in the poem feels true.
MM: What other work is your poem in dialogue with?
SN: I was reading Patrik Svensson’s The Book of Eels at the time that I wrote “I Crossed the Sea Boardwalk.” The (still unsolved!) mystery of precisely how freshwater eels reproduce seemed to me equally intriguing as its inverse; how things with seemingly explainable origins (the water in ice plants, dreams of distant places) materialize at all.
Marcus Myers: Can you tell us the story of your poem that placed in the 2023 Michelle Boisseau Prize?
BW: This poem was born two years ago when, newly engaged, my partner and I were relocating from Ohio to New York. There were many uncertainties about that move, but our decision to create a shared future together in a new city felt more exhilarating than bittersweet. It also pays homage to her love of gardening.
MM: Does this piece come from a manuscript of related poems? If so, what work do you see it doing as you’ve put it in play with them? If not, how do you see each poem you write and “keep” in relation to those you’ve already written and those you’ve yet to write?
BW: This poem does not come from a larger manuscript, although many of my recent poems explore, in some fashion, a tension with faith in the background of the lyric. Max Ritvo, a poet I deeply admire and wish I had met, once remarked that the study of poetry was “secular worship.” I like that idea very much. If there’s a larger relationship at work, I can’t see it yet.
MM: Can you tell our readers about your process for making a poem?
BW: Most of my poems begin with an image and I start from there. As I continue to draft or think about the poem, I put more images or phrases next to each other and see if anything interesting happens. In “We Make a Prairie,” I had been thinking my way around what eventually became the final line, that radical and transformative “yes.” It took several drafts to figure out I was going to end there instead of begin with that idea. My poems are smarter than I am, so my process involves long periods of paying attention while the poem reveals its own logic.
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